Swear Box Revisited and Bravery

The Founder

21 Feb, 2017

Brave : having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty.

The above definition is taken from the Miriam Webster and demonstrates perfectly the traits some men and women show in the line of duty every day. People like soldiers, firemen, coast guards to name just a few.

But now there’s a new kind of bravery that we have to face, in the sphere of social media. Writing a blog is one way of putting your voice, ‘out there’, we’ve covered elsewhere the new ‘fire’ of shock-blogging where people throw a few f-words out there to spice things up and that’s a form of bravery.

If you’re a LinkedIn regular, you can’t possibly have missed the article about the lady working in a shed. Her name is Cara Mackay and only she’ll know what she was looking to achieve by chucking the F-Bomb out there, but whatever, it doesn’t matter. It was brave in a social media way. Since there, there have been plenty of people (notably from the marketing, PR, digital media space) all having a little swear-up. You’ll see a link to another one, posted five days after Cara’s original. Not brave necessarily but it seems to be some kind of catharsis for the author, but it kind of took Cara’s lead for the subsequent swear-box contributors to speak up.

The Founder is a fan of Cara’s. Not because she has a potty-mouth (but still, if that works for her then hey, we ain’t judging) but because she has the conviction to put it out there. LinkedIn banned her for a day and tried to take away her right to free speech but you can’t keep a firecracker like your shed woman down for long!

But Cara has inspired The Founder to be brave in his own way; to finally do something he wished he’d had the vegetables to do ages ago. Starting this weekend, The Founder is going to look at every single contact ask them, why are we connected? What’s in it for me, what’s in it for you?

It may sound ridiculous but several times over the last few months, when asking for intros, we’ve been told, ‘Oh, I don’t really (actually) know them’. One even called himself a LinkedIn Whore. And so, in the large scheme of things, this may not seem brave. But actively looking to reduce a professional network sure does feel it!

Shuttle is a trading name for Lackford Consulting Group Limited, Registered in England and Wales: 09667926

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